featured gallery for March 2005

Unexpected Encounter

Landscape? Nature? Not exactly the type of imagery that comes to mind most readily when one thinks of the work contained in the Frank Moore Archive Project. Unexpected Encounter was conceived as an effort to alter that perspective by highlighting a genre rooted in centuries of art historical tradition that appears intermittently throughout the archive. Together the selected artworks elicit an exploration of and reconsideration of the varied possibilities that nature and landscape provide in contemporary artistic practice.

Beginning with its first significant apparition as a true genre in 17th century Dutch painting, the theme of landscape has provided a vastly malleable vehicle for both the interpretation of nature and pictorial study. Quite uniquely, it allows for the expression of artistically driven analyses, while likewise embodying greatly varied emotions.

A certain sense of serenity and quietness marks the mood of the pieces in this exhibition. From the soft, puffy cloud against a warm, blue sky in Nora Wallower's "Greenport #1" watercolor, to David Faulk's abstract sky and ground composition "Green Sky Landscape," a bountiful stillness prevails. Some record literal observations; others are perhaps imagined; and a few fall somewhere in between.

The works speak subtly and poetically. Each makes one stop and reflect on the most basic of elements -- form, color, composition, ground, foreground, background, shadow, snow, water, sunlight. Devoid of human presence, varying degrees of solitude can be drawn in certain instances, as indicated in the title of A. Lineszy's oil on canvas "All Alone," while others are filled with a more transcendental, even spiritual belief that one is actually never alone, as Joel Wateres implies with his c-print entitled "God Smiles."

By selecting these "unexpected" works, it is my hope that this exhibition will further illustrate the true diversity of art in the Frank Moore Archive for curators, artists, and all others looking to discover new work and that it serve to educate those who mistakenly assume that the work of HIV-positive artists is only related to HIV/AIDS by underlining the sometimes overlooked truth that though the archive members may be HIV positive, they are still, first and foremost, artists.